The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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You’re listening to The Ancient Tradition.  A Wonk Media Production.  Music provided by Joseph McDade.  Here’s your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to The Ancient Tradition.  I’m your host,  Jack Logan. Great to have you listening in. If you’re a new listener, we welcome you to the program. If you’re a long time listener, we welcome you back. It’s great to have you. Today I’m gonna just jump right in. We’re gonna pick up right where we left off in our last episode, in episode number 54.

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we found that across the ancient Near East and ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt and Canaan that God is universally described in the text,  universally depicted in the iconography as a sext being, as a being who has either a male or a female body. This is a very important discovery because it indicates that in the ancient world there was a remarkably consistent belief that divine beings possessed

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both a body and a defined sex. On today’s program, I’m gonna demonstrate that across the world, thousands and thousands of miles away from the ancient Near East and thousands of years later, we find that God as a sexed being stubbornly persists. It’s yet another powerfully strong stubborn bit. One so persistent that we can trace its roots  all the way back to the dawn of civilization.

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And because we can do this, we argue that the belief that God possesses a defined sex emerged from a single source in deep antiquity, a source we call in this program, the ancient tradition, where it constituted a central tenant of who God is. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, wait,

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The vast majority of Jews and Christians today don’t believe this. They don’t believe that God has a physical body or a defined sex. And you’re correct. The vast majority of Jews and Christians today reject outright the notion that God is a sexed being. I think it’s really, really important before we move on in the podcast to explain why this is. So today we’re going to start the podcast by diving into the biblical canon to first see how the text itself

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describes God. And then we’ll examine why and when the notion of a sexless God developed among Jews and Christians. I think you may be a bit surprised by what you learn. This is why it’s  always important that we don’t abdicate our personal responsibility to acquire knowledge, be it book knowledge or spiritual knowledge to anyone else.  If we do, we just might end up believing things we otherwise wouldn’t if we just done our homework.

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After that, we’re gonna take a look at a couple of the deep theological tensions the shift from a sexed God to a sexless God has caused in Judaism and Christianity. From there, we’ll explore just how deeply rooted the belief in a sexed God is across various parts of the world, in ancient Greece,  among the Hindu, Norse, and Pacific Islanders, in South America, Japan, and China.

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So let’s start with the biblical canon. What does the Bible say about the notion of a sext God? When we examine the textual descriptions of God in the Bible, we find, as astounding as this sounds, that God is described almost identically to the way in which God is described across the ancient Near East, in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan.

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As number one, a being who upholds the cosmic law. We’ve talked about this quite a bit on the program. In Hebrew, it’s referred to as tzedek. And as a glorious being of light, which we’ve discussed in episode number 29. And as a being who has a distinct corporeal form, a body. I’ve given numerous  biblical examples of this throughout the podcast. If this subject really interests you, I’ve got to tell you about a book published three years ago.

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written by Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou. She received her doctorate in theology from Oxford University and today she teaches at the University of Exeter. She’s there as a professor of Hebrew, Bible and ancient religion. The book’s titled God and Anatomy. In this book, Dr. Stavrakopoulou shows that

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contrary to the contemporary descriptions of God in Judaism and Christianity as bodiless and sexless that the God actually described in the biblical canon  is described as having a tangible male body. The book’s pretty big. It’s like  420 some pages of written text, but then there’s like an additional 200 pages of like a glossary and a bibliography and sources and notes. It’s quite large.

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that’s because she’s meticulously cataloged biblical reference after biblical reference that speaks of God’s body parts, His feet and hands and face  and for today’s episode very importantly His loins. She finds  just like I’m arguing that the God described in the Bible is described in much the same way in which God is described across the ancient Near East which of course

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indicates to me that this  was the original way in which the ancient heroes understood God. The book blurb that’s posted on Amazon calls the book, quote,  an astonishing and  revelatory history that re-presents God as he was originally envisioned by ancient worshipers with a distinctly male body.

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Before I get into her research, I want to point out that I don’t agree with all of the conclusions that she makes in this book. She’s an acknowledged atheist who believes that the God depicted in the Bible is a social construct, is manmade, where I do not. I firmly believe based on what the ancients themselves tell us, along with the jaw-dropping cosmic depth, symbolic depth and…

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sophisticated nature of the theology that the ancients taught that the God described in the ancient world and in the Bible was revealed to human beings by God or by God’s emissaries in the very beginning so that we human beings would have the correct understanding from the very start of who God is. The difference between Dr. Stabarakopoulou and myself of course is a matter of faith.

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Still the same, I think her book is really important and it’s worth reading because she establishes that the Bible from cover to cover unequivocally describes God as having a male body. What’s even more, especially in relation to this program, is that so, much of what she writes is tied to  so many of the things that we’ve discussed on the podcast, like kingship and conquering the sea dragon, the temple abode.

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subjugating one’s enemies under one’s feet and what she calls quote, God’s heavenly household. And that’s just to name a few. So it’s worth the read if just for that. I think Dr. Stavro Coppola would find so much of this podcast intriguing because we’ve independently been arguing so many of the same things that she argues in her book.

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But this podcast clearly differs in that we argue like we did in the last episode that God’s male body has to be understood in reference to the entire theology. God’s male body plays a very, very important role in the grand kingship theology that was taught across the ancient world. It’s a cosmic theology, the full extent of which doesn’t appear to be very well known or very well understood by contemporary scholars.

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Contemporary scholars seem to be really well versed in individual aspects of the theology, like Forsyte’s great book, you remember that? The Old Enemy, which established the importance  of slaying the sea monster. But I don’t know of any scholar who’s systematically laid out the entire cosmic kingship and temple building theology as it’s found in the ancient world. Along with its astounding implications, it’s a grand theology.

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which is precisely why we’ve put this podcast together so that anyone from scholar to layman who’s interested can gain a much greater understanding of the theology the ancients actually taught. See, without the full  theological backdrop, which Dr. Stavro Kapulou is missing on some level, it’s pretty easy to dismiss the corporeal nature of God as man-made or the social construct.

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But when we consider the full theological backdrop and the absolutely vital role God’s male body plays in that theology, it’s not so easy to dismiss the corporeal nature of God as just some social construct.  The theology matters. God’s male body  must be understood in terms of the full theology. Now, of course, whether or not one believes the theology, again, that’s a matter of faith. But I’m arguing

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that one cannot understand God’s male body  independent  of a full understanding of the theology. Because the ancients themselves never saw God’s male body outside of  or tangential to the cosmic kingship theology they taught. The two are inseparable. All right, so let’s take a look at the Bible. When we look at the text itself,

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we find that there are literally thousands upon thousands of pronouns. He, his, him,  masculine verb forms, like the Hebrew word bara, which means he created. And loads of titles like God, Lord, Master, Father, King, which describe God as male. And even titles like Savior.

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which is found in Isaiah chapter 43 verse three, or Judge, which is found in Genesis chapter 18 verse 25, are masculine titles in Hebrew. When we examine the biblical text itself, the God described there is  unequivocally a sexed being, a male God. So let’s take a look at two of the titles, Father and King. These are two of the most common titles outside of God and Lord.

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Which is interesting because these are the same two titles that show up time and time again  in the ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Ugaritic literature to describe God. For example, in the book of Malachi, chapter two, verse 10, it’s towards the very end of the Hebrew Bible, it says, speaking of God, and this is the King James Version, quote,

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Have we not all one Father? Have not one God created us? The New Living Translation reads,  are we not all children of the same Father? Are we not all created by the same God? This verse clearly stresses God’s male paternity as a Father. And who does this text tell us God is the paternal Father of?  Us.

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all of us on the earth, you and me. Now where have we heard this before? On page 20 of God and Anatomy, Dr. Stavro Kapulou notes, quote, a fragment of ancient poetry in the book of Deuteronomy. So we’re talking about the Torah here. Not only locates Yahweh with a pantheon, and a pantheon is more than one God, but also reveals exactly who his

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and his here is Yahweh’s father was. She’s referring to Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse eight. And the translation she provides reads,  when Elion, now Elion here is the Hebrew name for God, which means God most high. Don’t miss the adjective most high here because that suggests that there are lower gods. Elion is the most high  of the gods.

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apportioned the nations. When he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the divine sons, his sons. So here we’re told that the most high God, Elion, had fathered divine sons, which is exactly the same thing we read in the ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Ugaritic texts. Now listen to what this biblical text tells us about who one of his sons was. Quote, he

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speaking of the most high God, fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the divine sons. For Yahweh’s portion was his people. Jacob, who is Israel, his allotted share. Right here, this  biblical text tells us that Yahweh is one of the high God, Elion’s many divine sons.

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This text is telling us that Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, who’s the Christ of the New Testament, is the son  of the most high God, Elion. Now know there are many out there who can’t fathom the notion that there could be any God higher than Christ of the New Testament, but that’s exactly what this text is telling us. It’s telling us that Yahweh, or Christ, is the male son of Elion, the most high, his father.

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who’s given the epitaph most high because in the heavens he is ranked higher than his sons. This passage stresses the most high God’s  male paternity. So just like we saw in our last episode, we see here that the theology that is contained in the biblical canon is a family-based theology, a divine family theology. In reference to this text, Dr. Stavro Kapulou writes,

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Here, Yahweh appears as just  one among El’s  many divine children. When we turn to the Psalms, to Psalm 29 verse 10, which was written by King David, we’re told that God, like we see in ancient Egypt and in the Ugaritic literature, reigns as an eternal king. Verse 10 reads, and this is the NET Bible translation, quote, the Lord, which refers to Yahweh,

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sits enthroned over the engulfing waters. The Lord sits enthroned as the eternal King. In this verse, the Hebrew for eternal King is melek olam. According to Strom’s lexicon, olam conveys, quote, the concept of eternity or an indefinite unending duration, something that’s everlasting or perpetual.  And melek, as we’ve learned on this program, is a masculine noun.

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that denotes a male king or ruler. And this is all in reference to Yahweh. This biblical text clearly affirms that God is a male being who reigns  as an eternal king, a male ruler. Now,  this verse should cause you pause because what King David is telling us here is not a uniquely  Jewish  doctrine.

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King Dave is telling us the same thing about God that the rest of the ancient Near East has been telling us all along, that God is male, that he sits and that his throne sits  on the waters. The Mesopotamian Apsu, the Egyptian waters of noon, the Primordial waters, and then it’s from that seat that he reigns as an eternal king. What it says right here in Psalm 26 is exactly the same thing that the Egyptians tell us in

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Pyramid Text 600, which we covered in depth in episode number 31. So what are we to make of this? This isn’t a minor controversial prophet or Jew writing this. This is King David teaching these things. Right here, King David writes, quote, the Lord sits enthroned over the engulfing waters.

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the Lord sits enthroned as the eternal King. What King David writes here  is actually the exact image that’s portrayed on the top of nearly every ancient Egyptian obelisk. A tomb seated on a throne on the Ben Ben stone that sits atop the primordial waters. Or as King David says it,  over

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the engulfing waters. Now I bring this up because it’s widely believed among Jews and Christians today, like I pointed out, that God is without body or sex. But  this is not what the ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians and Canaanites taught about the God who sat on a throne over the primordial waters. They  indisputably attested that he was male and had a male body. So

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When King David tells us right here in verse 10 of Psalm 26, the same thing that the rest of the ancient world has been telling us about God, I believe that King David’s words are yet another witness to that truth, as is every reference to God’s  maleness in the biblical canon. I’ve only briefly hit on some of the passages in the Bible that attest to God’s male sex, but know that

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These passages are not anomalies. Nearly every single page  of the Bible refers to God as a male being. So when we consider this, then we have to ask why so many Jews and Christians today believe the opposite, that God is disembodied and without sex. Did Jews  always believe this or is this a more recent belief?

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So to answer these questions, we need to dive into the Jewish writings and find out, number one, when historically was this argument first made? Does it show up  really early in the Jewish writings, in the middle writings, or in the later writings? And number two, we need to look into who made the argument. What was their background? And number three, we need to look into why that individual or those individuals

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made this argument? Did they claim that God revealed it to them?  Did they come up with it by themselves? Were they heavily influenced by groups  outside of Judaism? The answers to all of these questions matter when we’re trying to establish the true  nature of God. Because if we don’t get the true nature of God correct, we won’t get the theology correct. A sexless God

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leads to a very, very different theology than a sexed God. So let’s dive into the Jewish writings to see if we can find where Jews first argued that God was sexless. Let’s start with the Bible. So the first thing that we find  as Dr. Stavro Kapulou puts it on page 16  is that quote, God’s body, which we’ve established as male  is

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nowhere denied in the Bible. In fact, get this,  seeing God’s body was one of the greatest privileges given to mortal beings in the Bible. Dr. Stavro Kapulou writes on pages 16 and 18, quote, in Genesis, Abraham walks alongside him and Jacob has a wrestling match with him.

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In the books bearing their names, the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel each see God sitting on his throne, while Amos sees him standing in one of the temples. A talkative young man called Stephen in the book of Acts, and the enraptured, if terrified, writer of Revelation known as John of Patmos, both of whom see God sitting enthroned in the heavens with Christ seated or standing next to him.

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in all these biblical stories and many more besides, it was simply a given that God had a body. The sensational aspect in their telling was that God had allowed people to see it. Such a rare privilege that during the second temple period between 515 BC to 70 CE, God was increasingly understood to have long hidden his body.

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from the world, rendering it unseeable. Okay, let’s stop here for a second. Here we learn that during the second temple period between 515 BC and 70 AD, God, quote, hid his body from the people. Now, why would he do that? Well, I imagine from what we’ve read previously on the program in the Moses Sinai account, must have been because the people weren’t worthy to see his body.

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Listen to Dr. Stavro Kapulou explain how the people’s inability to see God’s body during this time period actually contributed to the belief in a bodiless God. She writes,  during the second temple period between 515 BC to 70 CE, God was increasingly understood to have long hidden his body from the world,  rendering it unseeable, but an unseen body

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is not the same as a non-existent body. This emerging theological emphasis on the hiddenness of God would eventually give rise to the abstract, incorporeal deity of Judaism and Christianity. A deity no longer shrouded by fire and clouds, but only wondrous, inscrutable mystery. But Judaism and Christianity are post-biblical religions, and their disembodied deity

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is a later  reimagining of a God who was far from enigmatic. For the God of the Bible was a deity who not only had a body, but a personal name, a family, and a host of companions in the heavens. So note here how she argues that God’s hiddenness during the Second Temple Period led to the quote, reimagining of God.

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as a disembodied deity. She wrote, quote, this emerging theological emphasis on the hiddenness of God would eventually give rise to what would become the abstract, incorporeal deity of Judaism and Christianity. Eventually is the key word here, because although there’s hints here and there in the Hebrew Bible that the Deuteronomists, the group of writers that were responsible for composing and

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shaping significant portions of the Hebrew Bible during the sixth century BC, which was a time of considerable political and religious upheaval in ancient Israel and Judah, reimagined what was meant by God’s hidden nature. You know, wasn’t until some 400 to 600 years after the Deuteronomus, around the turn of the millennium, around the first century AD, that we find the first  written statement.

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by a Jew explicitly asserting that God is bodiless and by implication, sexless. So who was the first known Jewish writer to declare God to be bodiless? It was a man by the name of Philo of Alexandria. If you aren’t familiar with Philo of Alexandria, Philo was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt.

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sometime between 20 BC and 50 AD.  If you’re familiar with this time period, Alexandria was actually a major center of Hellenistic culture, where you had Jews and Greeks  and Egyptians interacting with each other. Now, we don’t know if Philo was formally  schooled in Greek philosophy. It’s very likely that he was, but we know from his works, and he had an extensive number of works,

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They estimate at least 70, 50 of them survived today. They’re full of direct references and concepts and terms directly from Greek philosophy. This indicates that he was deeply immersed in Greek philosophy, especially in the works of Plato. He  seems to have had a very  deep admiration for Plato. Philo was  so persuaded

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by Greek philosophy, especially Plato’s philosophical ideas about the nature of God, that he tried to harmonize them with Jewish theology. This is a practice that’s known as philosophical syncretism. A scholar by the name of Marija Todorovska notes that Philo’s writings, quote,

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mythical and theological Hebraic thought and the philosophical concepts of the Greeks. So he merges them together. And this is a really, really important aspect of Philo’s writings for us to understand. Because as you’re gonna see in just a second, the notion of a bodiless God came directly from Plato, from Platonic philosophy. See,

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Philo was profoundly influenced by the Platonic view that ultimate reality  is immaterial, perfect and unchanging. Ultimate reality. In Plato’s thought, anything material is by nature imperfect and subject to decay. So a truly divine being would have to be incorporeal and beyond physical limitation. Therefore God could not

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have a body or a sex. So  Philo applied Plato’s framework to his interpretation of Hebrew scripture, arguing that biblical references to God’s body or emotions had to be read allegorically and not literally. Philo portrayed God as  abstract, infinite,  and completely beyond the physical world, which was in complete alignment

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with the Greek philosophical ideal  of a transcendent, formless deity. This marked a significant departure from earlier Jewish traditions, which  often accepted the anthropomorphic language of the Bible at face value. As Rabbi Joshua Amaru insightfully asks, quote, why was no one bothered by corporeal imagery of God?

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until Judaism came into contact with Greek philosophy? Well, that is indeed a very excellent question. Philo’s conception of a bodiless, and again by implication a sexless god, was  absolutely shaped by Greek metaphysics.  And it may have also been shaped by

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Second Temple Jewish thought, which we mentioned earlier, which was still tying to grapple with the notion of a hidden God. Ultimately though, Philo reimagined the Hebrew God as bodiless. Not because scripture declared it, but because Greek philosophy demanded it. And I wonder how many Jews and Christians today are aware of this, that the belief in a bodiless God comes

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primarily from Plato, not from  one of the Hebrew prophets. As Dr. Stavrokapoulou outlined earlier, the Hebrew prophets, the ones who  were privileged to see God and wrote about it in the Bible,  universally declared that God had a body and that he was male. This is especially apparent  in the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel’s account.

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which is found in Ezekiel chapter one. We’ve talked about this before in the program, but I’ve got to bring it up again here because this account, more than any other account found in the Bible, attests to God’s male body. In this account, the prophet Ezekiel is given the rare privilege of seeing God. And in verses 26 and 27, he describes for us what he saw. The King James Version reads, quote,

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upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, for the appearance of his loins even upward and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire.

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The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel tells us here that when he was given the privilege of laying eyes on God, he saw that God had the body of a man, but it was different. His body had the appearance of fire. It took on the color of amber.  It actually shined. And Ezekiel tells us that it wasn’t just his face that was shining. His body above his loins had the appearance of fire and his body below his loins had the appearance of fire.

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which is just another way of telling us that God’s entire body shined like fire. The Hebrew word, the King James translator is translated as loins here, is the Hebrew word  mot-ni-am, which I’m gonna talk about in just a second. Loins refers to God’s  reproductive organs. If we take a look at the same verses in the New Living Translation, we see that they chose to translate mot-ni-am as waste.

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And this is their translation quote, from what appeared to be his waist up,  he looked like gleaming amber flickering like a fire. And from his waist down, he looked like a burning flame  shining with splendor. So the New Living Translators preserve Ezekiel’s witness that God has a bodily form.  But when they translate the Hebrew word mot naim as waste,

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They’re essentially sanitizing Ezekiel’s more explicit claim that God had male reproductive anatomy. Motinayem or variations of it show up 47 times in the Hebrew Bible and 42 out of 47 times the King James translators translate it in its reproductive sense as loins. Listen to what Dr. Stavro Kapulou says about the Hebrew word motinayem.

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and this is on page 103. Quote, mot naim, a Hebrew term traditionally  and politely  rendered loins or waste, but which more accurately refers to the groin and its genitals. He, Ezekiel, openly acknowledges God’s genitals. Ezekiel’s account is a stunning display of the graphic corporeality of God.

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Ezekiel’s witness of God is indeed stunning.  One would have to employ a considerable amount of mental gymnastics to interpret Ezekiel’s witness of God’s body and God’s reproductive organs  as metaphorical. Why would a God who does not have a sex show himself to the prophet Ezekiel metaphorically as a male having a body with reproductive anatomy?

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What could this possibly convey to Ezekiel metaphorically? Well, luckily, we don’t have to depend  on mental gymnastics because it’s Philo’s admiration of Plato, not Ezekiel, that demands a metaphorical interpretation. With this in mind, we need to take a minute here and talk about Plato’s reasoning in light of the theology taught within the ancient tradition. See,

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Plato argued that God could not be made of matter, possess a material body, because matter was subject to decay and eventual dissolution. Take for example a tree, as the tree ages, it eventually rots and it decays and it ultimately dies. So if God were made of matter, Plato reasoned, he too would be susceptible to decay and death, qualities that are fundamentally incompatible with the notion

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of God. So  Plato concludes that God cannot possibly be made of matter, so he must need be immaterial, bodiless, and again by implication, sexless. In terms of logic, this seems very persuasive. And it was. Dr. Stavro Kapulou notes on page nine that

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Plato’s ideas were so persuasive that they ultimately shaped the conception of God across the entire Western world. She writes, quote, these erudite philosophical ideas would gradually come to shape the thinking of certain Jewish and Christian intellectuals. So they began to reimagine their deity in increasingly incorporeal, immaterial terms.

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It is the broadly Platonic notion of the otherness and unlikeness of the divine that has shaped the more formal theological constructions of God in the Western religious imagination. And yet, these constructions are built on a conceptual framework very much at odds with the Bible itself. For in these ancient texts, God is presented

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in startlingly anthropomorphic ways. This  is a deity with a body. Nearly everything that Plato taught about the nature of God contradicted what the  ancients taught. The ancients taught that God was not constrained by the corruptibility inherent in matter. The ancients taught that God had the power to reverse the second law of thermodynamics.

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We’ve talked about this quite a bit on the program. The second law of thermodynamics states that in a closed system, entropy or disorder tends to increase over time, meaning that all material things naturally move toward decay and disintegration and chaos, just like Plato argues. But the ancients taught that God was not subject to this law. They taught that he had the power to halt or reverse or even transcend entropy itself. Nearly all ancient cultures affirmed

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this very idea. From Mesopotamia to Egypt to Hebrew tradition, one of the fundamental characteristics attributed to God was his ability to transform chaotic matter into ordered matter, to reverse the second law of thermodynamics. The creation stories that we find across the ancient world and frankly around the world depict God transforming  a formless and tropic void

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into a harmonious structured cosmos. The biblical account of the first day of creation is a great example of this. God brings light into darkness and he separates and defines the elements and he establishes the boundaries, acts that are at their core a direct reversal of entropy. So God, far from being bound by the laws of physics as we know them, had the power to impose order on chaos.

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to restore what decayed and to renew what died, which is precisely why Christ in the Christian tradition was able to rise from the dead in a resurrected perfect material body as recorded in Luke chapter 24 verse 39. In this verse, the  resurrected Christ appears before his apostles and tells them, quote, behold my hands and my feet.

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that it is I myself handle me and see for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have. If God has the power to reverse the second law of thermodynamics, which the ancients taught and which they argued was one of the most important characteristics of God, then God by necessity need not be  immaterial as Plato claims.

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And matter itself need not be innately inferior or inherently flawed, corrupt, or  evil,  as the later Gnostics argued. Gnostics, who we learned from the Platonic terms they used in their writings, were also heavily, heavily influenced by Platonism and Plato. From what we can glean from the ancients, matter appears to be a substance that can be acted upon. When the awful sea monsters given reign over matter,

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That matter is subject to the second law of thermodynamics and it moves in the direction of corruptibility, deterioration and decay. But when God reigns over matter, his authoritative power transforms and sanctifies it and it moves it in the direction of incorruptibility, order, perfection in life.  All of the ancients attest to this. The ancients taught that matter is  only corruptible

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in the absence of divine power. And I’m just not quite sure how Plato missed the theological inconsistency in his argument. He clearly argues that God is sovereign, yet he imagines a God that doesn’t have  sovereignty over matter. And this is really perplexing to me, especially considering how God’s sovereignty over matter, his imposition of order,

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on chaotic matter. His ability to subdue chaos and bring about order is one of the most enduring  literary themes in the ancient world. We’ve talked about this quite a bit on the program about God’s power to reverse the second law of thermodynamics. If you’re new to the program and you want to learn more about this, it’s pretty fascinating. Be sure and check out episode number 14, the terrifying second law of thermodynamics.

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You’ll get a lot out of that episode as a standalone, but if you want to see how it fits into the larger theological landscape in the ancient world, I recommend listening to several of the episodes before and after it.

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All right, back to Philo of Alexandria. So Philo was  so persuaded by Plato’s conception of God  as an immaterial abstraction that now he had a problem. What was he to do with all of the verses in the Hebrew Bible and all of the Hebrew prophets that insisted God had a body and a sex? What was he to do with this incongruity? Well, there weren’t a lot of options.

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The only way to make Plato’s immaterial God compatible with what was actually written in the Hebrew Bible was to redefine it, to redefine the references to God’s body and sex  as merely allegorical or metaphorical, which is the position that persists to this day.  After Philo, another 1200 years go by before we find another Jewish writer systematically argue the immateriality

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disembodied and by implication sexless nature of God. And who was this? Many of you should know if you’ve been listening to the program. This was the medieval rabbi and Jewish philosopher, Mamanides, who we’ve talked about quite a bit on the program, who lived from 1138 to 1204 AD. In his work, The Guide for the Perplexed, he argued that God was formless.

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and beyond human attributes. And just like Philo before him, that position led him to interpret all of the sex-based language used to describe God found in the Bible as metaphorical. All right, that kind of gives you a historical background. We don’t have time to get into this too much today, but in a book titled God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men in Monotheism, the author, who is Howard Elberg Schwartz,

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He’s a trained rabbi and at the time he published this book, he was actually a professor of religious studies at Stanford. He notes  that the notion of an immaterial sexless God has caused  serious  theological tensions in Judaism for men. In a chapter that he titled, quote, a sexless father, referring to God and his procreating sons,

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Schwartz asks the following on page 199, quote, the symbol of a male god is not simply a legitimation of masculinity. It is also an image against which men must measure themselves and by whose standard they fall short. So how can men who are expected to procreate and reproduce the lineage of their fathers be made

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in the image of a sexless God. As a symbol to be emulated, a sexless father God naturally provides an ideal of male asceticism. To be really like God then, a man should have no sexuality. One can see how the theological tension here is considerable. The Torah commands men to multiply and replenish the earth, yet a sexless God

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whom they’re expected to emulate, demands that they should have no sexuality or reproductive capacity at all.  How are Jewish men expected to reconcile this? It doesn’t compute. On page 200 Schwartz notes, quote, an aesthetic male god, of course, would have posed much less of a problem for human masculinity had reproduction been less central to what ancient Israel understood by manhood.

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Israelite men were caught to be most like God. They had to renounce their sexuality, but they could not be truly men unless they fulfilled their obligations to continue the generations. Schwartz notes then that this theological tension becomes especially pronounced when the blessing of fertility is directly tied

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to the covenant that God makes with Abraham and his male descendants. In Genesis chapter 17 verses four to six, God tells the Israelites, quote, as for me, this is my covenant with you. You shall be the father of a multitude of nations and you shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I will make you the father of a multitude of nations.

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I will make you exceedingly fertile and make nations of you and kings shall come forth from you.” As a quick aside, did you know how Abraham is told that he will not only be fertile if he keeps the covenant, but that quote, kings shall come forth from him. So note how the covenant fertility and kingship are  all theologically tied together.

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This is why the male sex of God really matters, theologically. The association between the covenant and fertility was really driven home when it was symbolized by removing the foreskin from the male phallus  via circumcision. Schwartz writes, quote, the intertwining of masculinity and procreation are no more more evident

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than in the priestly understanding of circumcision. In the priestly writings, circumcision is treated as a symbol of male fertility, of God’s promise to make Abraham a father of multitudes. It is no accident that the symbol of the covenant is impressed on the male organ of generation. By exposing the male organ, the rite of circumcision makes concrete the symbolic link

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between masculinity, genealogy, and reproduction. And I would add the covenant and the entire theology. The close association of masculinity with genealogical proliferation, however, conflicts with the image of a sexless God.

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Again, one can see how this would cause considerable theological tension among Jewish men. And these tensions are further exacerbated by the scriptural mandate in the Hebrew Bible to marry, the order of patrilineal descent, the perpetuation and expansion of Abraham’s descendants through procreation, the conferrence of priestly status from father to son, and

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the express declaration in the Torah that human beings are made  in God’s image and likeness. It’s incredibly difficult to reconcile a sexless God with a theology that is entirely  dependent  on male sexuality.  It doesn’t make sense. On page 222, Schwartz writes,

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Views that deviate from Jewish tradition require explanation. Well, the explanation is Plato in Greek philosophy. Plato’s conception of the nature of God is a great example of how the theology that was originally taught in the ancient tradition can become transformed and distorted and corrupted over time. Plato’s

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philosophical conception  of the nature of God, of how he thought God needed to be, has led to quite a bit of confusion. What you should glean from this  is that the doctrine of an immaterial sexless God in Judaism came largely from Plato  and Hellenistic philosophy, which was then  advocated and perpetuated by Jewish philosophers like Philo and Maimonides.

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And you should also glean that this philosophical movement occurred quite late.  Most of Philo’s writings were written in the early part of the first century AD, which  is nearly 2000 years  after the prophet Abraham is believed to have lived. And the vast majority of this new doctrine developed only in the last 800 years after Mimonides wrote the Guide for the Perplexed.

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The ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Canaanites, and Hebrews had all been attesting for literally millennia in their ancient texts and iconography that God had a material body and was a sexed So these ideas came rather late. Despite Philo’s powerful influence over Jewish philosophers and later Christian theologians, the notion that God had a material body and a sex

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persisted and it continues to persist throughout the world. It constitutes yet another robust stubborn bit. In ancient Greece, biological sex served as a fundamental marker of divine identity. In the ancient Greek texts and iconography, the gods  Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Hermes, Asclepius and Oceanus are consistently described as male.

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whereas Hera, Aphrodite, Persephone, Artemis, and Gaia are consistently described as female. For example, in the Homeric hymn 27, a hymn to the goddess Artemis, we read, and this is the Hugh G. Evelyn White translation, quote, I sing of Artemis with golden spindle. This refers to an arrow. Loud calling the pure maiden.

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Note how Artemis is referred to here as the pure maiden. The Greek word that’s translated as maiden here is parthenos, which means virgin, maiden, or girl. Parthenos is actually where the word parthenon comes from. The word parthenon literally means the temple of the virgin goddess. The sex of the god is clear. The hymn continues, quote, the pure maiden shooter of stags.

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poorer of Eros own sister of Apollo. Here we see reference to the goddess Artemis in familial terms as the female sibling, the sister of the god Apollo. Iconographically Artemis is consistently represented across all forms of media like invasives and statues and coins and bas reliefs with a very distinctly female body.

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She’s depicted with delicate facial features. She’s usually got her hair pulled up or it’s flowing and  curls. She’s wearing flowing robes and she has a visibly female body, including breast. If you’d like to see depictions of Artemis as a female God, you can find them on the webpage for this episode. If we turn to the oldest Hindu scripture, the Rig Vita dated to the second millennium BC,

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And we read the very first  line. We read of a deity named Agni, whom the text describes as male. The text reads, and this is the H.H. Wilson translation, quote, I glorify Agni, the high priest of the sacrifice, the divine ministrant. In this text, Agni is clearly described as a high priest. The Sanskrit word that’s translated as high priest here

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is Ruteviz which refers historically to a male priest who officiated or participated in Vedic sacrifices in the holy place of Kanakala. The text says, I glorify Agni, the high priest of the sacrifice,  the divine minstrant. In this text, the Sanskrit word that’s translated as divine is devam or deva.

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which is the Sanskrit word for a male god,  one who interestingly shines, one who glows, who’s bright, who’s radiant. The word comes from the root div, D-I-V, which means to shine. The female equivalent to deva  is devi, D-E-V-I, which specifically denotes a female god. So in Sanskrit, devas are male gods and devis are female gods.

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In this text, Agni is described as a deva, a male god. So here we have the very first line of the oldest known Vedic scripture attesting the divine beings have a sex, male or female. Now that’s something. In the Rig Veda, the gods Indra, Agni, Mitra, Varuna and Vishnu, along with a lot of others are described as male. Iconographically, the god Agni is depicted with a male body.

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Sometimes he’s depicted with a beard, but most of the time he’s depicted shirtless with a clearly male upper body. If you’d like to see iconographic images of Agni, you can find them on the webpage for this episode. In other Vedic traditions,  Ushas, Lakshmi, Parvati and Suti are identified as female gods. For example, Lakshmi, one of the chief goddesses in Hinduism is sometimes referred to as

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Shri, S-H-R-I, which in Sanskrit means noble or one of glory or high rank, which  get this is often associated with kingship. In a late body of hymns  known as the Skri Kumula Stotram, dated to sometime between the 9th and 12th century AD,  all women are described as being the embodiment of the goddess Lakshmi.

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The song reads, speaking of the goddess Lakshmi, every woman is an embodiment of you. You exist  as little girls in their childhood, as young women in their youth, and as elderly women in their old age. The connection in this song between Lakshmi and the female body,  all female bodies is unmistakable. It seems to suggest like we’ve seen elsewhere,

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that women on earth are patterned after the likeness or image of a female god in heaven. All right, iconographically, Lakshmi is commonly portrayed as a beautiful woman. She’s usually draped in an elegant red sari, standing or sitting on a lotus flower. If we turn to the Norse pantheon in Scandinavia, we see the same thing.

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All of the deities mentioned  in the Poetic and Prose Edas are identified as either male or female. For example,  Baldr, Freyr, Thor, Dillinger, and the high god Odin, along with several others, are identified as male. For example, in the Prose Eda in the Gelfangening, the god Baldr is described like this. Listen for the male descriptors. This is the Broder translation. Quote,

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The second son of Odin is Balder, and good things are to be said of him. He is best, and all praise him. He is fair of feature and so bright that light shines from him. The masculine descriptors are pretty apparent. The second son of Odin is Balder, and good things are to be said of him. He is best, and all praise him. He is fair of feature and so bright

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that light shines from him. Balder is clearly described as male. As a quick aside, did you also catch that the god Balder is described as having a glorious light? The text says that he is quote, so bright that light shines from him. Some 15 female goddesses are mentioned in the Gelfangining just alone, including Frigg, Saga,  Fula and Freya.

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The Gelfangenin says this  of the goddess Frigg, quote, his, and his here refers to the high god Odin,  wife was called Frigg, daughter of Fjorgen. And of their blood has come that kindred, which we all call the races of the Assyr that have people the elder Asgard and those kingdoms which pertain to it. And that is a divine race. So we learned quite a bit about Frigg in this passage. We learned that she’s female.

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passage tells us that she is the wife of the high god Odin. It tells us that she’s the daughter of Fjordun, who’s a male god. And the passage tells us that Frigg is the mother of the Assyr. Now the Assyr are those gods who make up the principal pantheon of gods in Norse mythology. The passage stresses Frigg’s female sex as a wife, a daughter, and a mother.

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all familial relations. If we turn to the South Pacific to Polynesia, we find a similar pattern. We find that Kane, Kanaloa, Ku, Lono, Tangaloa, and Tane Mahuta are described as male gods,  and Papatuanuku, Hikuleo, Pele, and Nuakea are described as female goddesses. The goddess Hikuleo

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is the Tongan goddess who stands guard at the entrance to Pulohtu, the realm of the ancestors. A statue of her is housed in the Met in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City,  and it depicts her with very voluptuous breasts, legs, and buttocks. The Met says, quote, that belie her tremendous vigor. If you’d like to see pictures of the Tongan goddess, Ikoleo, you can find them on the webpage for this episode.

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If we turn to South America to the Aztecs, we find the same thing. Nearly every single one of the numerous gods found there is defined as either male or female. Tesla Kapoka, Quetzalcoatl, Huetzalopochtli, Etzpapalotl Totec, and Etz Tetli are all described as male. For example, Huetzalopochtli, the patron god of the Mexica tribe, is

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depicted in the Codex Barbonicus anthropomorphically as a male with black and yellow facial markings, wearing battle gear, holding a serpent-shaped scepter. Whereas,  Myktikatsiwadal, Taltecutli, Shochi Ketsal, and Tonantzin are described as female. Myktikatsiwadal, for example, is depicted in the Codex Borgia, shirtless,

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exposing female breasts. In Japan, Amaterasu, Itsunami, Inari, Kanan, Tsukuyumi are all defined as female goddesses. And Fujin, Fukurokuchu, Hotoi, and Izugnagi are all described as male gods. Paintings and statues of the goddess Kanan

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depict her in full female form  dressed in flowing robes and she’s decked in lace and jewelry and then there’s a crown on top of her head. Pukorokujo on the other hand, a male god is depicted as balding.  He’s depicted as an elderly man with a white beard and this really protruding forehead. And finally, if we turn to China, we find the same thing. The gods are understood to be sexed beings. Bixia,

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Chang’un, Chang’chi, Matsu, and Doumu are described as female goddesses, and Fu Xi, Lei Gong, Lu Ban, Ying Wang, and Yu Lao are described as male gods. In the iconography, the male gods are often portrayed with stately goatees, you’ve seen these, in elaborate robes, in a crown,  or an imperial headdress of some type.

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whereas the female gods tend to be depicted with delicate female features, very white faces, and often with these elegant updos. As we’ve seen in this episode and in the last episode, the vast majority of religious traditions in the world attest that God is a sexed being. It’s quite a robust, stubborn bit. And for those religious adherents in Judaism and Christianity who no longer believe that God is sexed,

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We learned in this episode that this  is largely due to Plato and the influence of Plato’s philosophical ideas had  on Philo of Alexandria during the first century AD  and on Maimonides in the 12th century AD. A theological shift that occurs very, late in Jewish history, some 2000 years after the Hebrew prophet Abraham and hundreds and hundreds of years after the Hebrew prophets.

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Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, mortal beings who had the rare privilege of seeing God with their own eyes  and who unequivocally testified in the Bible that God was male and had a male body. God’s embodied sexed nature matters. It matters theologically. I hope you’ve seen that in this episode, especially in Judaism, how it’s intimately tied to the theology.

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As the podcast unfolds, you’re going to discover that it’s intricately tied to nearly every single aspect of the ancient tradition. As I close out this episode, I’d like to leave you with something to ponder.  If  as the Hebrew prophets, I just mentioned a test, God is male  and maleness constitutes only one half of the reproductive whole, then

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Doesn’t this imply that there has to be a female God? Doesn’t God’s maleness make him by definition incomplete? If so,  what happened to her in the Hebrew Bible? Where did she go? Those are some things to think about. I’ve got to leave it there.  With that, I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare. Knowledge  is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

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I’m Jack Logan.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition.  A Wonk Media Production.